Read Say Her Name for Free Online

freedom.
    Naya checked her phone as they plodded down the damp library stairs. ‘Caitlin says that they’re all at the graveyard. You wanna go?’
    ‘I’ve made my feelings about the graveyard clear, have I not?’ Bobbie thought hanging out in the graveyard was disrespectful on about a hundred different levels of wrong.
    ‘Yeah, I know, but Mark’s there. He was kinda cute. I liked his arms. They were some … masculine arms he had right there.’ Here was the real reason the Piper’s Hall Ladies came into Oxsley – the fleeting possibility of an XY chromosome.
    Bobbie’s attention pricked up. If Mark was there … ‘Is Grace with Caitlin?’
    ‘You mean is Caine with Mark?’ They trundled past the war memorial and started towards the church.
    ‘That’s not what I said.’
    Naya grinned. ‘You know my
abuelita
used to say I was psychic … ’
    ‘Caine is cute.’ Bobbie rearranged the scarf around her neck. ‘But Caine is also with Grace. The end. I’m so not little Susie Homebreaker.’
    ‘Girl, there’s no home to break. The gossip as I heard it was that Caine was going out with some girl in his year at Radley High and it totally mashed his head so he dumped her. He’s a free agent. Just because Grace likes him doesn’t mean anything.’
    Bobbie’s heart did a curious flippy thing at that information. She snorted. ‘It means she would rip out my eyes and wear them as earrings.’
    ‘Don’t be scared of Grace Brewer-Fay. She’s all talk.’
    ‘The heads on pikes outside Christie House say otherwise.’
    Naya cackled – she had such a filthy laugh, it was fabulous. ‘Come on, Bob. Let’s go stare at boys for an hour. It’s biological destiny, why fight it?’
    ‘God, as if Caine even knows I’m alive. He’d never go for someone like me in a million years.’
    Naya looked at her like she’d sucked on a lemon. ‘Don’t make me go all Tyra on your ass, Rowe. You are a rare and beautiful pearl.’
    ‘Oh you are so full of crap! But okay, let’s go.’ Bobbie caved in in return for Naya buying her an iced bun from the tea shop. It’s the little things.
    St Paul’s was a decaying, much-weathered village church on the road leading out of Oxsley. It was a squat structure with a moss-covered loping roof and square steeple – no spire – but four vicious-looking spikes on each corner. The unkempt church grounds rippled with wild grasses and weeds, the headstones standing at drunken angles where the ground had subsided with time. The place had that abandoned, end-of-days feel that put Bobbie on edge. The sprawling graveyard tumbled over the land between Piper’s Hall and Oxsley – literally dead space. Bobbie could see the nearest gravestones from her bedroom.
    The gaggle of noisy ‘youths’, as the churchwarden called them, was in stark contrast: a rainbow of American Apparel hoodies and fluoro trainers. Grace and Caitlin (her second-in-command) were perched on a stone sarcophagus, swinging their legs. With them there were four guys in total, two strangers joining Mark and Caine. As they entered the churchyard through the lychgate, Bobbie saw Caine was separated from the rest of the group, practising stunts on one of those tiny little bikes with bars on the back wheel.
    ‘Hey, hey, hey!’ Naya announced their arrival.
    ‘Hi!’ Caitlin waved them over. Caitlin was a lovely girl somewhere under all the make-up, but her parents paid full-fee – a polite way of saying she hadn’t exactly passed the entrance exam with flying colours. It was a good thing, then, that she was as pretty as any Disney princess. Her looks and minted parents had ensured she’d been initiated into The Elites. ‘Hey, everyone. This is Charlie and Tom … you already know Caine and Mark, right? This is Naya and Bobbie. They go to our school too,’ she said in her bubblegum voice.
    ‘Bobbie,’ said the ginger one, Tom. ‘Is that short for something?’
    ‘Yeah.’ Bobbie was bored already. Clearly they’d